Mode-Automata in Simulink/Stateflow

This paper presents an application of the mode-automata based design method to Stateflow/Simulink. The observation we make is two fold. First, we realized that modeautomata, being one of the most convincing proposition made recently to separate control from signal processing, is only starting to be applied to industrial tools. Second, although the separation of control and signal processing is somehow effective in Stateflow/Simulink, the lack of formal definition does not lead to a valuable interpretation. The goal of the work presented in this paper is to make these two approaches converge. We introduce a formalisation of Stateflow/Simulink where the language has been reduced so that to fit the mode-automata approach and thus restrict the expressive power of Stateflow in a way still suitable to real-life application. We then illustrate the approach with a small application in digital hydraulics controller development.